Here and There.
In our missionary journeyings we visited the west coast of the mainland, preaching to the Seaschelts, Squamish, and other tribes as far north as Cape Mudge. On Vancouver Island our work extended from Cape Mudge, on the north, to Race Rocks, near Victoria, a distance of 160 miles.
In making a visit to the former place, with a party of three men, we were again in imminent danger of being lost. We had camped for the night above Qual-a-kum and got an early start in the morning, when a south-easter blew up. It was a stiff breeze, but all was well until we got near to the south end of Denman Island, where the lighthouse now stands, when our sail, mast and all, broke away from the socket, and it was a miracle that we were not upset.
Some of our experiences were humorous as well as trying. I took passage one day with Chief Tsil-ka-mut, who with his wives and children was on his way to the Fraser River, where the Indians congregated to pick and dry berries, and to fish and dry salmon. The trip across was uneventful until in the fog and darkness we lost our way at the mouth of the river.
The chief put his pole down in the mud and anchored his canoe, as he supposed, and we went to sleep on board the craft. Next morning we found we were high and dry in the mud on a bar that seemed to be miles away from any water. Oh, the mud, mud! There is nothing that compares with the mud of the Fraser for slimy stickiness when the tide is out. It was near noon the next day before the tide again reached us, and there we were all those hours in the scorching sun, a disconsolate crowd indeed.
At that time there was no white man to be found settled on the Delta lands of the Fraser. Soon after this the Ladner brothers took up land on the south bank of the river and gave their name to the place. Then followed Ferris on Lulu Island, and Boyd and Kilgour on Sea Island, and others at different points, every one of whom was voted a fool for “taking up” these swamps with cat-tails and bulrushes and frog-ponds. Now these districts are covered with some of the most beautiful and productive farms to be found in any part of the world. The shores are lined with large canneries for the packing of salmon, and thousands of people occupy these old-time mud-banks.